Over in
this thread, BDD
mentions that the ground pours are not a ground plane (which I knew) and also that they are actually harmful because they add "unwanted parasitic capacitance."
I have a vague understanding of what
parasitic capacitance is, but I don't really see how the harm appears in this case. With what I understand from
my post above on return paths it seems to me that while a ground fill may not help signal paths much (or even at all) if they cross cuts in the fill, the signal return path will never be lengthened by a ground fill, and may be shortened, so the capacitance of a signal path ought never be increased. Further, where power supply lines are crossing ground fill, I would think that this will simply add a teeny bit more bypass capacitance between power and ground (much less than would be provided by a typical bypass capacitor) on that area of the board, which never should be harmful (and might even be helpful).
So what's the issue here?
Picking this up, even though it's old: I don't think it adds "capacitance" but it does add "inductance". That's the effect of making the return path deviate from the signal path.